The present invention relates to telecommunications. More specifically, the present invention relates to telephone and telecommunication systems and service for communication across networks.
As society becomes increasingly mobile, communicating with a person who is constantly traveling becomes very difficult and important telephone calls that require immediate responses may be missed. For example, a call to the traveler's work extension will often only be answered by a voicemail service. Thus, important telephone calls that require immediate responses may be missed. The caller may leave a voicemail but the caller must rely on the traveler checking their voicemail and calling them back. As such, a caller is not automatically connected with a recipient when the recipient's extension is called.
One technique that may be used to automatically connect a caller is known as call forwarding. One method of call forwarding includes using a star code to forward calls for a telephone number. Once the star code and the forwarding number are entered, all calls to the original location are forwarded to the forwarding number. This technique has many drawbacks. For example, if the person is not at the telephone number, the forwarded call will go unanswered. Furthermore, the voicemail at the forwarded telephone number may not be dedicated to the person.
In some cases, a telephone call may be forwarded to a cell phone, or the like. However, drawbacks to this include that a user must typically be within a region where his phone company has coverage, else the user will incur large roaming charges for incoming or outgoing calls.
Thus, in light of the above, what is desired are improved methods for forwarding telephone calls to a remote user.